The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff

#21 Building Trust and Innovation: 5 Insights from The All-In Manager. Reflections on my conversation with Ali Merchant

• Mark Cundiff

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In this episode of the Learning to Lead Show, host Mark Cundiff reflects on Ali Merchant's book 'The All-In Manager', and shares key insights from their previous discussion. 

He highlights five major takeaways for leaders: 

  1. The common phenomenon of accidental managers
  2. The importance of trust is built on care, reliability, and competence. 
  3. The role of psychological safety and candor in fostering innovation.
  4. The necessity for leaders to actively seek feedback and address blind spots.
  5. The shift from being a problem-fixer to a question-asker and debate-maker.

Cundiff emphasizes that true leadership is about continual learning, meaningful results, and genuinely caring for team members. Listeners are encouraged to go back to the previous episode, download the leader notes, and subscribe to the podcast.

00:00 Introduction to the Learning to Lead Show

00:42 Key Takeaway 1: From Accidental Leader to All-In Manager

02:20 Key Takeaway 2: Building Trust as a Leader

03:35 Key Takeaway 3: Psychological Safety and Candor

05:00 Key Takeaway 4: Seeking Feedback and Busting Blind Spots

06:24 Key Takeaway 5: Stop Being the Fixer

07:57 Conclusion and Call to Action


Connect with Ali Merchant:

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🔎 About LeaderNotes

LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go. It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.


Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com

Hello, welcome to the Learning to Lead Show. I'm your host, mark Cundiff, and today we're gonna discuss some of my reflections on Allie Merchant's book, the All In Manager, and the discussion we had on the Learning to Lead show. In the previous episode, from Accidental Leader to All In Manager, I'm gonna give you five key takeaways from that conversation. If you haven't listened to that, listen to the previous episode and make sure you catch the content. He's got a great book out there called The All In Manager, gives you some really great insights on how to be a better leader take your team to the next level, and here are my five takeaways for growth-minded leaders. Number one, most managers are accidental, but you don't have to stay there. His research shows that three fourths of all managers are accidental, and what he means by that is they were good at their job, they got promoted, and were told now you lead people. No training, no coaching, no roadmap. Being an accidental leader isn't the problem. Staying stuck is, I had this happen in my career when I started out in my career. I spent my first 12 years in sales and then I was promoted to run a plant. Never had any training, never had any leadership development teaching or management teaching. It was just, here's the keys, now run the show. That happens to a lot of leaders. A lot of people get promoted. Out of doing a good performance at a lower level, but aren't trained how to take it to the next level. If you're really good at your job and one day your manager says you're going to start leading people, you're an accidental leader. That's what Ali Merchant says about the type of leaders that we see in our organizations today. Ali defines an all in manager, someone who. Is insatiable learner, constantly growing, especially in self-awareness. The second thing for an all-in manager is he delivers meaningful results, not just activity, not just results, but meaningful results. Then thirdly, an all in manager personally cares about the success and wellbeing of their people. You're not all in until you have all three as true for you. The second aspect that it gets into is trust is a bank account built on three deposits, care, reliability, and competence. Trust isn't a fuzzy filling, it's a stack of observable behaviors. Ali breaks trust into three deposits, number one, care. Do I believe you generally care about me, not just the metrics. Number two, competence. Are you actually good at what you're doing? What you're leading? Number three, reliability. Do you consistently do what you say you're going to do if one of these is messing? Trust erodes a reliable but incompetent leader isn't trusted. A brilliant but self-centered leader isn't trusted. A caring but flaky leader isn't trusted. Here's what Ali says. If people don't trust you, nothing matters. The book doesn't matter. The frameworks doesn't matter. The tools don't matter. The templates don't matter. Nothing matters if you don't have trust. Trust is like a bank account. You keep making deposits through caring, reliability, and competence so that when you drop the ball, your people have enough trust, balance left over to forgive you. The third aspect that he discusses in this show is psychological safety plus true candor, equal innovation and honest conversation. Psychological safety means people feel safe to take interpersonal risk, to disagree, admit mistakes, and say, I don't understand without fear of punishment attack. Retaliation in unsafe environments, innovation quietly dies because people hold back their best thinking. Ali ties this directly to candor. Done right. Candor is clear, direct, and kind, not a license to be harsh or careless. Leaders must set standards for what is acceptable candor, and what does that look like? Face-to-face specific. Respectful. And what's unacceptable? Nasty emails, sarcasm, public shaming, passive aggress of behavior. Then they must reward candor when it shows up. We can be candid by being clear and direct and being kind at the same time, being tough on the problem and tender on the person when safety and candor meet. People speak up before bad ideas go live and before small issues become big crisises. The fourth key element we discuss is how elite leaders hunt for feedback and buster blind spots. One of the key issues that it gets into in the book is how. The higher you go in leadership, the more likely you are to have blind spots because your people won't give you true candid feedback so that you can learn and grow. Ali's blunt about this, your survival as a leader depends on your ability to bust your blind spots, and you can't do that without feedback. A surprising research finding shared the higher up a leader goes. The less feedback they typically ask for and receive. New employees tend to ask for a lot CEOs, almost never. What you have to do to be a great leader is ask specific questions like, what is one thing I can do differently in how I run our team meetings? Then wait and listen. Push past vague praise and ask for examples and behaviors. Can you give me an example of when this didn't work well? Next, he says, listen, without defending, then think and act. Something is always wrong with you as a manager. That's why you need feedback. As Ali says, avoiding feedback feels safer in short term, but over time it's how leaders quietly stall out. The fifth and last takeaway is stop being the fixer. Be the question asker and the debate maker. Ali urges leaders to get lazy in the right way, not by checking out, but by refusing to be the automatic fixer in every situation. Two big shifts. Learn and listen tour, especially for new or accidental managers. Ali recommends spending time listening before you try to prove yourself. Ask people about their work. Their struggles and what's getting in their way. Don't rush to be the smartest person in the room. Secondly, become a debate maker. When you bring an idea or strategy to your team, don't just sell it. Invite them to poke holes in it. Can anyone poke holes in this? What is your opinion? What do you see as the issues? What are the critical mistakes that we could be making that question? Can unlock hidden concerns so that you don't repeat what Netflix and Quickstar mistake that he discusses in the book and in the podcast where they got blind to some of the issues because there wasn't a safe culture where they could speak up and it cost them millions upon millions of dollars because of the mistakes they made. It also builds better decisions because people feel ownership in the final decision. Ally's bottom line. Your value isn't just having the right answers, it's asking the right questions and listening deeply. Make sure that you listen to our previous episode with Ally. Make sure you go to the show notes and download the leader notes. That'll give you a summary of all the things that we discussed. You enjoy the content you're getting on the learning the lead show, please go give us a five rating. It's your favorite podcast directory and also subscribe. So this hits your directory. Every time we publish a new episode, go out and learn, grow and lead. Take your organization to the next level.